Henry Ward Beecher: “We turn out any law, and say, Discuss it! that it may be the stronger!”

Mariners might as well blame you for the swing and toss of their craft when tides troop in or march out of your harbor, as us, for heaving to that tide which God swells under us.

Whatever may have been the evils, the agitation has only come through men, not from them.

The questions which have provoked discussion among us for fifty years past have not been questions of fundamental principles, but of the application of principles already ascertained.

Is it my excited ear that hears an airy phantasm whispering? or do I hear a solemn voice crying out, "Arise?